Is There a Case for an Open Convention?

I was on a group chat last night in which everyone involved, including me, was bashing the idea of an open convention. But it got me thinking about the arguments for and against.

The Harris Question

Perhaps the most important argument against a (genuinely) open convention is, of course, that Harris should be the nominee. There’s a very good chance that Harris would prevail against her challengers. But if we think that running Harris is non-negotiable, then we don’t want a contested convention, period.

We’ve had multiple posts and many comments in favor of Harris, so I’m not going to litigate that here. What matters is if it’s #HarrisorBust, then we don’t even need to move on to other considerations.

The inverse is also true. We need to evalaute the costs (and possible benefits) if we think that:

• Harris is, on balance, an extremely bad choice. It seems unlikely that Democratic powerbrokers could a) settle on a different ticket and b) corral the delegates to vote for it. I suppose a Biden endorsement of someone else might be enough. But I wouldn’t bet on it for anyone other than Kamela.
• If we think that Harris is a good choice, but not a necessary one.

The Downsides

There are a lot of potential downsides to a contested convention. Some of the big ones include that:

• It could saddle Democrats with an inferior presidential nominee. This isn’t simply a matter of allowing a terrible candidate gain the nomination. It could produce a candidate who seems great but is absolutely unprepared to, for example, address matters of foreign policy. It could produce an improperly vetted candidate, e.g., one vulnerable to attacks that no one will have sufficient time to prepare for.
• The vetting problem extends to the VP nominee.
• It could create sufficient acrimony to further weaken the party, i.e., if it reopens ideological divides, alienates a constituency, or whatever. This could happen at the convention itself, via the process, or emerge afterwards. It could, at the very least, open the door for foreign and domestic ratf****rs to exacerbate cleavages in the Democratic coalition.
• Even if the process doesn’t create fractures in the coalition, it might create a powerful “Democrats in disarray” narrative—or something similar—that could help Trump.
• A contested convention would not be a scripted infomerical; it would be difficult to produce glossy movies celebrating the candidates and almost impossible to push out a coordinated campaign message. This could make it easier for the Republicans to define the candidate.

The Upsides

Are there any? I can think of three:

• It could generate substantial attention and interest—far more so then a standard modern convention. While a lot of the daily grind would be boring, no one really pays much attention to that part of the programming anyway. Reality TV, with the stakes being the possible leader of the most powerful country on earth.
• It would show a Democratic party practicing… democracy. What could possibly be a better contrast with the Republican convention? In an era of rising populism, do we really want elites choosing Biden’s successor?
• It could generate additional weeks of free media in the form of “introducing” the candidate to the public.

Thoughts

It probably matters that the convention will be made up almost entirely of Biden delegates. That’s not going to look like 1968. It’s not even going to look like 2016 or 2020. This is the kind of delegate pool you’d want if you set out to design a contested process that was least likely to descend into chaos.

The last eight years have upended a lot of the conventional wisdom about politics—concerning what voters will and won’t accept, the importance of candidate discipline, and many other things. The era of television changed the way parties ran conventions. Why should we assume that the model of the 1980s and 1990s is the best one for the era of social media?

What do you all think? What arguments for and against have I missed? How should we weigh the costs and benefits? Is this a YOLO moment, with democracy on the line and the Democrats already in disarray? Or does that mean playing everything as safe as possible?

ETA:

• Anyone who thinks I am advocating for a (genuinely) contested convention, please read the first sentence of the post.
• I sketched this out as a decision tree, which is why there’s no discussion of candidate quality in the “upsides.”
• These also factor into any argument about Biden withdrawing from the race, because once he releases his delegates they can vote however they like. Which means even if “party elders” tee this up for Harris, there is a non-zero chance that the convention becomes (genuinely) contested. As multiple people have pointed out, Marianne Williamson seems to think this is here “so you’re saying there’s a chance?” moment.